Over the past decade of teaching I’ve looked at hundreds of thousands of landscape photos. And I’ve realized that the best ones all adhere to certain principles. I want to share those principles with you in this workshop.
In this free workshop, you will learn:
Workshop Details:
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What’s Your Photography Background? What Goals do You Have? How Can I Help You?
Joshua Cripps is a renowned landscape photographer who has garnered worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking images of our planet’s wild places. His photos have been published by the likes of National Geographic, NASA, CNN, BBC, and Nikon Global.
The Mount Whitney Gallery was founded in 2023 by Joshua Cripps as a way to share his passion stunning landscapes of the Sierra Nevada and beyond.
Set at the foot of the breathtaking Sierra with a view of the range’s highest peaks, the gallery features large format, museum-caliber fine art prints of Josh’s signature photographs.
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43 Responses
Hi Josh,
I first got into photography as a kid who grew up in a mountain valley and loved to spend time in the wild. I spent a lot of time in the library in our small town where I discovered books by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Josef Muench. I just about wore them out, at first because they illustrated the kinds of places I loved to visit or wished I could visit. But in time I started thinking I should make photographs (see the Ansel Adams influence) and started taking my mom’s old Ansco Speedex 120 roll film camera along with me on backpacking trips or just hiking. Eventually, I bought a Canon AE-1, and that served me well for about 25 years until the film wind lever broke and I couldn’t get it repaired. I also spent a number of summers in my college days as a firefighter for the Forest Service, and wanted to bring home images of the incredible places and sights I was seeing. I bought a compact 35mm Olympus clamshell camera that I could easily carry in my shirt pocket and pop out whenever I wanted to. Next up was a Canon PowerShot S5IS and a Canon ELPH which launched me into the digital world. Eventually, my iPhone became the best camera I had, but earlier this year my angelic wife surprised me with a Nikon D7500 package that included two zoom lenses (18-55 and 70-300). I’ve rediscovered the joy of capturing images that I hope communicate the kind of emotional response to the scenes I experience, and It’s rejuvenated my love of photography. I discovered your channel on YouTube and have learned a lot. I’m sure I will learn a lot more. Thanks.
Hey Paul!
Oh wow. As I was reading your comment, I was struck when you mentioned your time as a firefighter. Can’t imagine the cool stuff you saw through that experience.
Congrats on the new camera (and the angelic wife)! I’m sure it’s gonna lead you to some wonderful moments. Welcome to the community here. Looking forward to helping with your journey.
Josh
Hi Joshua,
my name is Aleksandar Ugljesic, I’am from Serbia, and I am not a beginner in photography. Actually, I am with camera long before digital era. So, still after many years I believe that one can always be better. I was very pleased and happy with your landscape editing tutorial I found on YT, and especially with what I find about you and your work after that. I believe that I can improve editing part of my photography, that is mostly based on automotive industry and cars, for which I am adding one example of my work. By the way, I am also Nikon user, still devoted to D3, and looking forward to reading your book that I’ve just downloaded.
Thank you for accepting me, and all the best.
Alex
Hey Alex,
Love your attitude! I completely agree: there is always more to learn and more to grow. Happy to have you here.
Josh
Hi Josh, I live in Colorado and have lots of beautiful landscapes to photograph! I have always been a canon person and mostly shot in Auto mode just for fun. I recently started watching videos on YouTube about photography technique and decided I wanted to learn and do more. I bought my first full frame camera (Sony), last week, and through watching your videos I have been learning a lot about various techniques. Ive even ventured out of Auto Mode and have been enjoying it. I am planning on renting some lenses and heading to Aspen in October to hopefully get some beautiful shots of the golden aspen leaves. I cant wait to learn more! I love not only the wealth of information that you share in your videos but also your sense of humor! Thanks!
Hi Sharyl,
Congrats on making the decision to level up your photography, and for venturing out of auto mode! This is when things get really fun, because you get to take creative control over your photos. Happy to have you here, and looking forward to helping you learn!
Josh
Hi Josh,
I’ve always been interested in photography, my first real camera was the Olympus C-745 Ultra Zoom Bridge camera before I moved over to a Nikon D3200 DSLR camera which came with two kit lenses, an 18-55mm and a 55-200mm. I also have a tripod and some ND filters which are 0.6, 0.9, 1.2 and a polarizer filter and a wireless release. Before the lockdown I used to go to classic car and other car shows and walks that I used to take with friends I would take my Nikon along and shoot some landscapes, including scenes with ruins in them. However, I really haven’t yet taken shots that I am happy with and I haven’t gotten around to trying out the filters that I have. So during this lockdown period I have been experimenting with frozen flower photography and watching a lot of workshops and talks online, however I would really like to get back out there and get the landscape photos that I can say, ‘Yeah I really love that shot’, but strive to enhance on that.
I was so inspired by your live webinar on Tuesday there and also really liked the way of writing down your thought proceed to get the photo that you really want. I will surely be watching it again and taking notes.
If there is advice that you could give me in the art of landscape photography, I would very much appreciate that as well. 🙂
Best Wishes,
Cameron Weir
Hi Cameron,
Welcome welcome! So happy to hear that webinar clicked for you (even with all the connection issues we had!). That “mini workshop” I gave with Alastair I have turned into a full-length webinar which will be going live on my website soon. It should really hammer those concepts home for ya! I’ll let you know when it’s live.
Josh
Hey Josh,
So glad to see you back on YouTube and moving full steam ahead. As my wife and I are forth generation Californians, now living in downstate New York for the past 40 years, we miss very much the wonderful variety of landscapes. Hopefully we will be able to return and put my fancy new DSLR to good use guided by your ebook.
In the meantime we are booked for a river cruise down the Volga from St. Petersburg to Moscow in May of 2021. By way of preparing I am looking forward to putting into practice the steps you write about in your ebook.
Thanks for your generosity in sharing,
Jim
Hi Jim,
Thanks so much! Dang, a cruise down the Volga sounds fantastic. Consider me jealous!
Enjoy the eBook; hope it helps clarify some concepts and give you a good framework to shoot from.
Cheers,
Josh
Hi,
I had to think about how to answer your questions and maybe that’s the answer to some of my difficulty – not pinning down goals or needs. I do this as a hobby which primarily revolves around travel, landscape, and flower photos – to share beautiful or unique places and objects in nature with anyone who’s interested and for my own enjoyment. My biggest concern may not be my biggest issue, but I feel like I don’t “see” well. I don’t feel like I know what is a good photograph, because whether or not I like it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good or that the majority of people who know what they are doing (or seem to) would agree.
I haven’t had a chance to sit down with your video yet, but I have started the 5 Steps e-book and I think so far the questions you have posed will help. They make sense to me. Sometimes I find I know about a concept but applying it is another issue! It’s like sitting down to draw and visualizing (also a problem) a realistic person but the outcome on my paper is a stick figure… I’m not sure where I’m going from here but I hope to level up with your tips, so thank you!
Hi Josh,
I’m a freelance artist in Reno, Nevada. I had no idea you published a book or had a workshop on photography until I plugged in your name on the web? Why would I do that? Because I saved a short video you produced back in 2011 of your hike to the Sierra Nevada’s spectacular Sabrina Basin. This video impressed me when I first viewed it about 6 years ago! Instead of continually zooming and panning you stationed the camera in a number of ideal spots that captured your action in front of it. That made the video so much more enjoyable to watch, and your music tied in perfectly too. This August, my wife and I plan to backpack to Sailor Lake and camp there for 3 nights ( the lake where you rinsed your face in the video)…so our most recent viewing of this video got us more enthused about the trip, thus my search to see if you had produced any other videos. I will look forward to reading your book and applying some of your suggestions. No specific photographic goals…other than improving my landscape photography for the enjoyment of family and friends.
Hey Tim,
Thanks for dropping the note. Oh man, you’re going to have such a blast up at Sailor Lake! It’s crazy beautiful up there.
In the meantime I hope some of the tips and and videos I sent out will help with the photography as well!
Take care,
Josh
Hi Josh, ambitious hobby photographer in southern Germany (originally from the UK). I’m just beginning to think about turning the hobby into a second job and really benefiting from your videos, it’s always great to hear a concept explained a second or third way as I try to develop my own ‘curriculum’ for workshops. Shame you’re the other side of the planet. I’d have like to have attended one of your courses.
Hey Mike,
Good to hear from you, and glad my vids have helped flesh out some ideas! If you make it out to California, lmk. In the meanwhile, best of luck in your photography, especially if you decide to take the plunge into leading workshops!
Josh
Very amateur photographer, I shoot for fun pretty much anything that happens to be in front of my camera.
I enjoy being outside, so nature and landscape is what I enjoy shooting, but living in the corn belt of Illinois not many grand landscapes to shoot,
so I make do with what we have.
Hey Hank, welcome! Illinois? Do you guys get those huge supercells up that way at all? I would love to shoot those someday.
No supercells, I would love to photograph one of those also, we get some impressive thunderstorms but nothing that large.
I live near the Kankakee river and our eagle population is growing, with several nesting pairs to photograph, if you know the secret locations.
take a look, I looked at yours,,,, https://hpopik.myportfolio.com/
Hello Joshua, Thanks for the ebook and course. I will set aside some time this weekend to do it. I took up digital photography in 2016 and have been exploring different genres from landscape, abstract to portrait. It is a hobby for me but I am really enjoying being creative and learning the process and post-process. I think of myself more as a landscape photographers and I guess my main goal is to work on improving my compositions. I spent the first couple years trying to distill down to a more minimalistic approach to learn to see the heart of what I was looking at and simplify my compositions. Now I am looking to push them to the next level. FYI my website needs a serious update LOL.
Hi Flora,
Good to hear from you. It sounds like you took a great approach: in my opinion simplifying and distilling an image down to its most important elements is one of the critically underrated skills in photography. Happy to have you here and let me know if you have questions.
Josh
Hi Josh
I am a Pentax shooter and have been for about 5 years. I love landscape and street photography and would love to do some portraits. My style is run and gun because I simply don’t have time for anything else. I do however still get some nice landscapes because I live bin a nice place. I would however like to move my landscapes up from “nice” to “great”. I rarely have two hours so will possibly not be doing the workshop but I do have the workbook. Welcome back and thanks for this 🙂
Kind regards
Peter
Hey Peter,
Good to hear from you. I can appreciate the lack of time. A couple of things there:
1) First, I’ll be sending you some shorter videos over the next few days that cover the same information as the workshop, but in 30-minute chunks. Hopefully that will be more digestible.
2) And second, the way I like to teach photography is through recipes and frameworks, which I believe are the fastest, most efficient way to improve your photos. I’ve got a short course on landscapes that uses this method to teach that would definitely help you level up from nice to great. I’ll send you the details on that in a few days as well.
Cheers,
Josh
Hi Josh,
I have always loved photography but I’m still considering myself a beginner. I live in France so I have a lot of possibilities to photograph landscapes. I particularly like mountains and lakes.
I have a Canon 100D with a 18-135 lens.
I don’t know exactly about precise goals, I just would like to learn more and improve in landscape photography. I would like to make people feel more emotions.
I’m going to read and watch all your lessons and advice. Thanks
Agathe
Bonjour Agathe,
Perfect! I think you’re in the right place then. The eBook will definitely help you get started putting more of your own emotions into your photos, which will help people feel more when they look at them.
Cheers,
Josh
Thanks Josh! Your tips on photography are excellent. More to digest in the book! I will keep them all in mind when the camera is focusing on Picture Peak.
Hey Josh,
Good to see you back on YouTube . I am only just starting with photography but let me tell you that you are truly an inspiration and I can’t wait to learn from your channel.
Good luck and thank you for producing awesome content.
Well wisher from Pakistan
Hey Suraqa,
Man, thanks so much! Pakistan is currently #1 on my list of places I want to photograph. I’m sure you’re going to be able to take some amazing photos as you get going. Where in the country do you live?
Josh
Hi Josh
My wife and myself started travelling, when the kids left home, First at home Lake district and her home country Scotland. Then abroad, this lead me to buying a camera, my first was a Sony nex 3, That year we went to New York some 10 years ago. Now my love for photograph has just grown. Last year I brought a printer Canon P100s, This has taken me to my next level, i’ve still got so much to learn so thanks for this Steve
Hey Steve,
My pleasure. Sounds like you and I have very similar origin stories with travel leading to photography. Here’s wishing you as many wonderful moments as it’s brought me. Let me know how I can help.
Josh
hi josh,over here in ireland we dont have many great waterfalls,but great beaches for long exposure i have a 16-35mm lens and use lee little stop and big stopper,which works amazing,my question is would grad filters take my photos to the next level.
Hey John,
Now that’s a great question. I rarely use grad filters anymore, except when I’m at the beach! I find that they help me get a good exposure in the 1/2″ to 2″ shutter speed range, which is my favorite range for shooting waves. So, yeah, a grad filter could be a good investment for you. I’d start with a 3-stop soft edge filter and see how that treats you.
Josh
Hi, Josh:
I am in Texas now, but was from camera/film Capitol of the World eons ago – Rochester NY. My Dad worked for Kodak for most of his life. Film and movies stuff was around us all the time, so doing photography sort of became second nature my whole life. He used to bring home free film for us to use. This is where I became familiar with a lot of aspects of Photography. Now life happens and I lost Photography as a hobby for most of my life until I got closer to retirement. Since Travel and Photography always interested me , retirement seemed to be the time to pick up the cameras again, this time in a digital world. This is where I’m at today, Retired and camera inn hand where ever I go. You never know what’s just over that ridge…..btw Thanks for coming back to the Youtube vlogs, I really enjoy them.
Hi Steve,
What a cool story. I’ve never ever shot film, don’t tell anyone! Happy to hear you’re picking up the camera again. As you said, you never know what’s over that next ridge. And photography is a great reason to find out!
All the best,
Josh
Hello Josh Cripps,
My name is Remy from Nigeria,Africa.It’s so amazing to have you back on YouTube,basically am new to landscape photography I just finished college but my zeal to go into Landscape photography full time has brought me to study alot of your works and achievements.I come from a country which according to my research has no professional landscape photographer but has vast amazing,glorious landscape just waiting to be explored and shown to the world..I would love if you could be my mentor in the least possible way that you can as it’s so not easy getting to meet like minds over here..Looking forward to your posts and activities on the channel…
Hi Remy,
Great to hear from you. Photographing in Nigeria would be a dream! Maybe you can be the first professional landscape photographer there. 🙂
Stay tuned, I have lots of stuff to share with you.
best,
Josh
OMG!!!,did I just get a reply from Josh???????????Am so emotional right now!!,thanks…I look forward to one day working with you or attending one of your workshops.
Remy
Haha! I look forward to seeing you on a workshop one day!
Hello Josh: My two prime areas of interest are landscape photography and macro. I live in an area rich in possibilities for both, and have read extensively about how to improve my photography. I feel like I’m missing something and cannot extract what I want from my photos. Looking forward to the workshop and any other suggestions you may have. Thank you. Greg
Hi Greg,
Good to hear from you. I’m curious where you live with those rich possibilities for photography. I feel very fortunate to live in a similar area.
What you say is a common complaint I hear: that despite all of the reading and YouTube videos, there’s a disconnect when it comes to actually making pictures. Have you had a chance to watch the online workshop yet? It goes into a lot of the reasons why that is as well as the ways that I think are actually effective at getting you results.
Cheers,
Josh
Hi Josh!
I have enjoyed photography for decades but a lot of my pictures are so so. Now that the kids are grown I have time to focus on my photos. I would like to create the best pictures possible whether photos of my grandson or trips or butterflies in my backyard. I also need a better camera but don’t know what we be best for me. I have a Canon Powershot SX 130. I would like something with longer telephoto lens with a faster shutter speed for the butterfly and grandson shots but also something that would take great landscape photos in trips. Can you help me? Thanks!
Hi Catherine,
Welcome! Sounds like the perfect time to pursue photography. To me it sounds like you’re ready for an SLR or mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses. That way you can optimize for shooting butterflies and your grandson, as well as landscapes. The good news is it’s hard to buy a bad camera these days, regardless of brand. However, I’m a Nikon shooter and will always recommend their gear. For you I might suggest the D500 because it has a powerful focusing system and a high-frame rate, which will be needed for animals and kids. But it’s also got lots of detail and image quality for great landscape shots. Not sure your budget, but the D7500 would also be an excellent choice at a lower price point.
Cheers,
Josh
Hello Joshua,
This is Himanshu Khanna from Bangalore (India)…I started learning photography by my own and interested in Landscape photography and wanted to learn more and more and wanted to build my portfolio 🙂
Kindly help me.
Thanks,
Himanshu
Hi Himanshu!
Welcome! I’m happy to help. Keep an eye on your inbox. I will send you some resources and training videos over the next few days that should help you improve your photography.
Cheers,
Josh